See also: Our Criticism of "Scientists Create Life -- God Not Required"

October 29, 1999 (revised, November 12, 1999)

This morning, I had the honor of completing a brief interview with Professor
Ghadiri. As I suspected, Professor Ghadiri does not have "life"
on his mind, except that his molecules are modeled after naturally occurring
organic molecules.

He mentioned three specific groups of scientists, including his group,
that have created self-replicating molecules, and indicated that there
are others. I asked him if these were derived from naturally occurring
self-replicating molecules, and he said that none of the molecules were
derived from naturally occurring molecules.

Two
of the three groups, his group and that of Guntr KieDrwski, have created
peptides, which are similar in structure to naturally occurring molecules.
Julius Rebek's molecule, says Professor Ghadiri, does not in any way resemble
the self-replicating molecules that we would find in nature, but is self-replicating
nonetheless. I did not ask Dr Ghadiri if this means that Dr Rebek's molecule
is not a carbon based substance.

I did ask him, however, if it is proper to consider these molecules "life"
and he shot back a resounding "No!" Nobody has even come close
to creating what we would call life, according to Dr Ghadiri.

From his tone, my imagination conjured an image of a scientist preparing
himself for the accusation that he was a modern-day Dr Frankenstein of
some sort -- or worse, someone who could accidentally unleash a powerful
and deadly organism into our environment. However, I must stress that this
is what went through my imagination: I cannot know for sure what brought
on this apparent tone, or even whether I accurately sensed a change at
all.

Then I asked him how we would define life for the purposes of
this research. He reminded me that life means many things to many people.
But for the purposes of this research, he said that to qualify as life,
something must have three qualities:

1. It is self-replicating.

2. It is self-sustaining.

3. It is capable of undergoing Darwinian evolution.

Though admittedly not a comprehensive definition for life (mules cannot
reproduce themselves), this is the definition Dr Ghadiri gave to me when
I asked for it as regards to this research -- the creation of self-replicating
molecules.

None of the molecules that have been made would sustain themselves (be
able to continue self-replication) in an environment outside of the chemical
reactions under which they are able to self-replicate, says Dr Ghadiri.
These molecules, he says, are themselves chemical reactions. They just
happen to be self-replicating molecules that mimic one of the processes
-- self-replication -- that is found in what we call living organisms.
(There goes any justified fear that they could thrive within our
environment.)

I would add that the molecules thus far created are probably far too
simple to survive even the smallest changes in structure, and probably
must retain their precise structure in order to replicate. Organic molecules
that we see in living organisms today contain vast amounts of redundancy
and are extremely complex, so that they can and do undergo small changes
without significantly affecting their ability to sustain themselves in
their environment.

Occasionally, a change or "mutation" will significantly affect
an organism's ability to sustain itself. The majority of these changes
impair an organism's ability to survive, and that organism usually dies
before reaching adulthood. Its mutated code is thus not carried into the
gene pool. Very occasionally (albeit very frequently from an evolutionary
time frame), the mutation happens to enhance an organism's ability to sustain
itself within its environment (although the same mutation would not necessarily
help the same organism living in a different environment). These "improvements"
are usually but not always assimilated into the gene pool, eventually replacing
the old code. A notable exception would be an organism which sustains a
favorable mutation, but which dies prematurely from an accident or some
other fluke that has nothing to do with an enhanced or impaired ability
to survive in its environment.

Back to the interview with Dr Ghadiri. We were discussing the publications
which document this work, and he asked me if I was a scientist in order
to ascertain whether I was able to read the scientific papers he was about
to recommend. I told him no, that my interest is one of philosophy and
of social activism, and that I am not trained as a scientist. When I mentioned
that in some of my discussions I am called on to defend Darwinism, he laughed.
He said that if man is still here a thousand years from now, very few scientists
from this time period would be remembered. But one scientist who will be
remembered is Charles Darwin. Another, he said, was "the inventor
of mathematics" -- although, ironically, the name had slipped Dr
Ghadiri's mind. We had a good chuckle over this. (He mentioned that the
scientist was an Englishman, and I now think he probably meant Sir Isaac
Newton.)

Dr Ghadiri suggested that I stop wasting my time engaging in discussions
wherein I am called upon to defend Darwinism, because it does not need
defending. "People are entitled to their opinions," he said.
I said that I agree, but reminded him that we have this state called Kansas
and this other state called Illinois and this other notorious state called
Tennessee.

As the conversation ended, I had the impression that Dr Ghadiri has
never seen the popular lapel button which says, "Never underestimate
the power of stupid people in large groups." But perhaps he knows
something about this matter that I do not. More likely, though, Dr Ghadiri,
as a scientist, speaks from a much different perspective than I do as an
activist and a lay philosopher.

Maybe Dr Ghadiri is aware of the four recent surveys which show
that between 45 and 47 percent of Americans are young-earth creationists.
He could know this and remain unconcerned for reasons that I cannot see.
Most likely, though, for anyone to go much further than Professor Ghadiri
does would be to overstep the bounds of scientific inquiry.

In this sense, scientific inquiry would say, at most, "Thank you
for the reminder that fundamentalism still thrives." Only an activist
or a social commentator, I think, would go so far as H. L. Mencken, and
say, "The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it,
but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it
forever infamous and ridiculous." ("Aftermath,"
The Baltimore Evening Sun, September 14, 1925.) But even Mencken,
in the same piece, later nudges himself back toward the outlook of a scientist:

True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for
them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that
they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.

I still suspect that Dr Ghadiri's remark may reflect upon at least
one reason why we have these problems in Kansas, Tennessee, and elsewhere:
The scientists rightly concentrate on their work, but some of us may need
to support science through public awareness and social activism.

I am reminded of a call to the Dr Dean Edell Show several years ago,
where the topic was the fact that many more advances had been made in breast
cancer research in recent years than had been made in prostate cancer research.
(This has since changed somewhat since the broadcast in question.) Dr
Edell suggested that this was because women tend more toward organized
activist efforts, whereas men tend to think that if something needs to
get done, we should simply do it rather than talk about it. Today's American
culture seems to be based more upon politics than upon practicality. The
work needs to be done, but appropriating the resources to do the work is
itself a lot of work.

People have been working for years to undermine any human progress which
contradicts cherished myths. Today, it seems as if these people think they
are entitled to more than simply their opinions. They seem to want protection
from criticism; but also, they seem to want the ability to enforce their
myth upon the rest of us. Since the myth they want to enforce cannot stand
on its own merit, the only method left for them is to try to discredit
any human progress which contradicts the myth.

We must remember that in 600 B.C.E., philosophers (what scientists were
called back then) knew that the earth is a globe (and is not flat, as it
appears to a mind that is unaided by abstract thinking skills). In 400
B.C.E., philosophers had made a close calculation as to the size of the
earth. By 200 B.C.E., they had realized that the earth is not a perfect
sphere, and had made some concerted efforts to measure how far off from
a perfect sphere this spheroid called Earth is.

The first two-piston steam engine was developed in AlexanDra by Hero
in 200 B.C.E. The library where Hero worked was later burned and destroyed,
piecemeal, over the centuries, by fanatics of both the Christian and the
Muslim varieties. Scientists and thinkers, both men and women, were brutally
murdered by mobs of priests and other frenzied clerics.

Long after these accomplishments came the Dark Ages. Ancient science
had become so completely forgotten, through the domination of the Christian
religion and its flat-earth dogma, that we now speak of the Copernican Revolution
-- as if Copernicus was the first to discover and publicize heliocentricity.
Galileo was persecuted in 1633 -- fully 141 years after Christopher Columbus,
in 1492, "discovered" a land that had already been inhabited
for tens of thousands of years. Galileo was persecuted fully 111 years after Magellan's crew,
in 1522, completed the first known voyage around the globe.

I suspect that had the science of the wheel contradicted some aspect
of the dominant and cherished myth, Copernicus and his associates would
have been too busy reinventing it to have made much progress in astronomy
and cosmology. We can only hope that science remains so firmly established
in the popular mindset that no upheaval can ever again overthrow it.

Man's persecution of his fellow-man's quest for truth is, in my opinion,
the deepest stain upon the dignity of the human species. This conversation
has reminded me that to hold wrong scientific opinions is not a punishable
offense. All scientific opinions must be subject to the test of public
scrutiny, and only those which continue to survive have the right to be
called knowledge. The rest are safely marginalized or ignored. We must
never persecute someone for holding a wrong scientific opinion. At the
same time, we cannot admit into the body of scientific knowledge an opinion
which has not passed the test of public scrutiny.

Cliff Walker
"Positive Atheism" Magazine

At the same time, we cannot admit into the body of scientific knowledge an opinion which has not passed the test of public scrutiny.